Busybox (http://busybox.net/) is usable even on full-blown desktop machine. I am successfully using my desktop with over a hundred programs like cat, cp, mv, sed, awk, gzip, chmod, chown, od, ping, wget, strings etc etc etc replaced by single /bin/busybox executable (~700kb) and /bin/cat -> /bin/bysybox style symlinks. I am building many packages from source and in most (like 99%) cases busybox implementations of those utilities are compatible enough that it just works.

In those cases where it is not, well, just remove the symlink and install "standard" version of the tool. And report busybox bug to busybox mailing list/bugzilla, so that it has a chance to be fixed.

I don't see any obstacles why DSL cannot use busybox and save ~10 megabytes of storage.